


i am leaving, i am leaving (but the fighter still remains)

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Force (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Brotherly Love, Canon-Typical Violence, Closure, Family, Gen, Play Fighting, Real Fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 20:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19034728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Jimmy used to fight with his brother all the time. But never like this.Necrosha.





	i am leaving, i am leaving (but the fighter still remains)

“I’m the only one who gets to pick on you,” Johnny used to tell him all the time, and it wasn’t even true back then because Becky Littlewing had been administering noogies and kicking his ass at both checkers and wrestling since before pre-school. That’s not to say that Jimmy’s older brother  _ didn’t _ pick on him. They scrapped plenty, pinching and punching and kicking and even biting, once, when Jimmy was 5. 

If anything, it gets worse when Johnny gets back from the Marines. It’s like he has to make up for the two years he missed out on. “Give it!” Jimmy huffs, shoving at his mountain of a brother while Johnny holds his latest G.I. Joe comic infuriatingly out of reach.

“Jump for it,” Johnny says. Jimmy does, straining his arms up as high as he can, but Johnny just holds it higher. “You almost got it, runt!” 

“Jerk.” Jimmy switches tactics then and kicks his brother in the shin. It doesn’t even phase Johnny. “ _ Yeesh _ . You’re like a  _ rock _ .”

“You know it.” Johnny gives him his comic back and rumples his hair, messing it up. “You’ll hit your growth spurt one day. Probably.”

Jimmy sticks his tongue out as Johnny heads back to their double-wide. “I’ll be taller’n you!”

“Keep dreaming, runt.”

* * *

 

The Hellions are frequently one ill-advised eye roll away from an all-out brawl, especially when Empath’s amping everyone up. Jimmy tries to be the level-headed one, but he gets pulled into more than a few scraps with Jetstream and Catseye. 

Fighting the New Mutants is kind of fun, actually. Sunspot packs a punch but he also jabbers while he fights, and Jimmy’s usually able to get under his skin enough to throw him off his game. Sometimes his team comes up on top, and sometimes it’s the Mutants. 

The members of X-Force get along better than the Hellions ever did, but that’s not exactly saying much. Shatterstar will pick a fight with anything that breathes (and some things that don’t, like their toaster). Jimmy’s usually able to best Sam when they spar, but Shatty takes him down almost every time.

* * *

 

In his career as a Hellion and an X-Man, Jimmy fights plenty of people. Plenty of his friends, even, for fun and for real. 

But he’s still not ready for what’s coming when Selene orders Johnny to drag him down to her dungeon. 

“You have to fight her,” he begs, and Johnny is a haggard shell, ghostly and horrible, but still somehow himself. 

And he genuinely sounds sorry when he says, “I can’t.” His fist comes down and everything goes dark.

* * *

 

Jimmy wakes up screaming, Selene’s knife through his hand. He’s beginning to wish he had left it sticking like a thorn in the Demon Bear’s monstrous paw. Again, he asks Johnny to fight it, to fight Selene’s control. But he can’t. 

“She told me… the girl by Selene’s side, she told me I would be forced to fight you,” John says. Even as he whales on Jimmy with inhuman strength and speed, his voice doesn’t change in pitch or cadence. He’s not even panting. They could be having a normal conversation back at Camp Verde. “I was just hoping that before it came to that, somebody would kill me. Again.” 

_ Wham _ . Jimmy blinks blood out of his eyes. “I’ll kill you,” he promises. “Johnny, I’ll send you back home. I swear. I’ll send them all back home. The tribe… Mom and Dad...” 

“I know you will, runt,” Johnny says, and he kicks Jimmy in the ribs. Bones crack, the sound echoing in the underground chamber. He’s using Jimmy’s blood to paint some sigil on the wall, part of Selene’s master plan. Every move is just as careful and graceful as Johnny was in life, but his eyes are full of pain. 

He strikes Jimmy again, and Jimmy sags against the dungeon floor, feeling small and helpless for the first time in a long time. 

“ _ Get up _ , James,” John insists. “Get up and fight.”

“You’re stronger than me,” Jimmy says, wiping blood from his mouth. 

“I’m dead. I’m disintegrating,” John says back. “You can get the upper hand here. Do it!” 

So Jimmy stands up, and fights back, and it doesn’t make much of a difference but Johnny crows encouragingly even as he pummels him back down. 

"I told you you'd hit your growth spurt one day," Johnny says. He brings the knife down again, and this time Jimmy manages to roll out of the way. "But you know what?" 

Jimmy kicks upward and knocks John off-balance, sending him careening into the wall. "What?"

"I'm still taller than you." He aims another kick at Jimmy’s ribs and Jimmy just takes it, breathing through the pain. 

"I found them. The people who destroyed Camp Verde," Jimmy says, because this is the shittiest reunion he can imagine but it is, in its way, a reunion. And there's a lot he's wanted to tell Johnny over the years. "Guy called Stryfe. And Ed Martynec, the rat."

"As I recall, he was more of a wolf than a rat," Johnny points out, grabbing his brother by the hair and slamming him against the stone wall. "Shoulda kept your hair short."

"I like it long."

"You kill Martynec?" Johnny had almost done so himself, years ago. The mad scientist shapeshifter had been slowly poisoning their mother, along with dozens of other people on their reservation. 

"He's rotting in prison," Jimmy says. "But I threw Stryfe into the pits of hell. Literally."

"Attaboy."

* * *

 

Eventually, Telford Porter shows up to Jimmy’s rescue, but not before John finishes the sigil. It’s going to work. Selene is going to ascend. But she isn’t going to win, because Jimmy’s brother tells him exactly what to do. 

Johnny tells him how to beat Selene.

* * *

 

When the rest of the team goes up against Wither and Blink, Wolverine sends Jimmy away, tells him to do what he needs to. 

He finds Johnny inside the nightmarish labyrinth of Selene’s castle, and Johnny asks him if he’s ready. And of course he isn’t. He could never be ready for this. “Yeah,” Jimmy says. “You?” 

They fight. John isn’t holding himself back— he can’t— but then, neither is Jimmy. This isn’t scrapping on Camp Verde… but it’s weirdly similar in a lot of ways. Even in death, Johnny fights the same. 

And he was right when he said Jimmy could get the upper hand. He can. He does. “I love you, brother,” Jimmy says, and snaps his neck.

* * *

 

Everything is a blur of death and darkness. They stop Selene— that’s the important part, that’s why they’re here. They finish her, if not forever, for a good while. And in the aftermath, as all those lost souls go back where they belong, Jimmy sees his big brother once again. He’s smiling, and he’s whole. 

“You did it,” Johnny says. “You can let go now, James.” 

He doesn’t just mean the fight against Selene, he means all of it. The destruction of Camp Verde, the reasons he chose the name Warpath. All of it, all the pain and rage and survivor’s guilt he’s been steeped in since the day Charles Xavier brought Johnny home in a body bag. It’s over. 

"Hey,” Jimmy calls up to Johnny, “tell Mom and Dad—"

"— that you're a successful lawyer living in California?" John says, smiling at him and bathed in gold. 

Despite everything, Jimmy laughs. "Tell 'em I love 'em."

"I will. They love you too, Jimmy," Johnny says. "So do I. We're all so proud of you."

And then he’s gone. The man who taught Jimmy how to fight, how to never give up, how to hold their cat Coyote the right way and how to defeat Selene, he vanishes back up to where he belongs. 

“Thanks,” Jimmy says, looking toward the stars. 


End file.
